Vegetarian Feast
A meatless Thanksgiving with Anna Thomas.
 
By Michelle Huneven, Photographs by Romulo Yanes, Produced by Susan Victoria - Gourmet, November 1999

It's almost noon on a warm, pretty Saturday in Ojai, California, and in a few hours Anna Thomas is serving dinner to 10, or 12, or maybe 15 people. She's combining a test run of her vegetarian Thanksgiving menu with a birthday celebration (her own), and preparations have already begun. But right now she has to make lunch. For seven people. "No problem," she says. "We'll have green soup." Anyone who knows Thomas, or has read the monthly letters on her Web site (www.vegetarianepicure.com), is intimate with green soup. She began making it as a diet dish and has since come up with dozens of delicious variations. "We live on green soup. We get so many greens. Every week, I just steam them and purée them with a few boiled potatoes. I'm sure you get all your vitamins and minerals for a week in one bowlful." Today's soup is velvety and pleasantly intense, with the bite of cilantro and arugula, the grassiness of amaranth. "Around here," Thomas declared, "green soup is a way of life."

She calls everyone to the table. There's Thomas herself; her housekeeper and comrade in the kitchen, Guillermina; Thomas's two sons, Christopher, 15, and Teddy, 14; and two of Teddy's friends who pedaled up on biked yesterday afternoon and haven't left.

Who serves green soup to teenage boys? Is Anna Thomas a little mad? But they eat it. And like it. They scrape down the sides of their bowls.

As soon as the dishes are cleared, Thomas turns her attention to dinner. "Now we really have to get down to work."

A tall, handsome blond woman, Thomas has written three best-selling vegetarian cookbooks and produced and cowritten a number of well-received movies with her husband, Greg Nava. She speaks in clear, loud tones (a trait no doubt developed from living with two teenage boys in an enormous house) and exudes vigor and decisiveness. Last year Thomas celebrated her 50th birthday by climbing Mount Whitney. Tonight's celebration, then, will be a piece of cake - or, in this case, pumpkin flan - which is already chilling in the refrigerator.

Thomas's kitchen is well stocked. Fresh organic vegetables have been delivered by the farmer who grows them at the foot of the hill. And earlier, Thomas went to the outdoor farmers market in Ventura. A row of baskets on the counter holds the not-so-perishable produce: oranges, lemons, ripening tomatoes, potatoes. The refrigerator is a study in compaction. "Buy good ingredients and don't mess them up," is Thomas's cooking philosophy in a nutshell. The meal will surely materialize. Thomas has an artist's faith that everything will come together in the end - and the nerve to make it happen.

Thomas's home sits atop a ridge overlooking the Ojai Valley to the south and the Los Padres Mountains to the north. Built in the 1920s, the house is a sprawling, shingled two-story affair with a row of imposing pillars out front. Any formality introduced by the architecture is promptly mitigated by Tessie, a plump golden Lab-shepherd mix who greets all visitors by rolling over on her back to have her belly scratched.

The house has 13 rooms, not counting bathrooms. From the front door to the kitchen is a hike down long, wide hallways filled with art: a triptych by Gronk and some early painting by her brother-in-law John - nudes and one luminous lemon.

The large, bright kitchen has two ovens, an island with a stovetop, plus an inside gas grill and miles of counter space, all of which will be used in the next few hours. At the far end of the kitchen, surrounded by views of the mountains, there's a long pine table and, to one side, a striped blue-and-white sofa. "It's the most popular sofa in the house," says Thomas, "and the only one I have to reupholster regularly."

Which makes perfect sense, because where else would you want to be when there's such a famously good cook in the kitchen?

"This will be fallish, automnal," Thomas says as she chops a pile of fresh porcini mushrooms. "So let's get in that mood."

Guillermina washes and soaks the corn huks while Thomas roasts chiles on the indoor grill. Then she chops the chiles and mixes them into the masa harina filling for the tamalitos. Thomas picks handfuls of fresh sage for the risotto cakes. Everyone sits down to stuff corn husks with the filling to make the tiny tamales.

The kitchen fills with the aroma of roasting mushrooms, and Thomas stops to inhale. "This is really a smell from my childhood," she says. "Having grown up in a Polish household, this is soul food for me."

The telephone rings often. In the distant living room Christopher practices the piano. The teenagers make occasional raids in the refrigerator. There's a mid-afternoon run to the local gourmet shop for extra Parmesan for the risotto cakes. The auxiliary pump goes out, reducing water pressure to a trickle. Thomas remains unflustered. After producing independent movies, nothing in a kitchen can throw her.

Nine people and half an orange crate of firecrackers arrive. The table on the terrace is set. Bottles of wonderful local wines are brought up from the cellar. The guests start out in the kitchen - first comers claim the sofa - and nibble on tamalitos and on oven-roasted green beans as crisp as potato chips. There are toasts with tequila.

Everyone helps carry out the bowls of ochre squash and sweet-potato soup squiggled with brick-red chipotle sauce. Then come the risotto cakes, the deeply roasted porcini, and the refreshing bright-green jicama relish with cilantro and mint. All the flavors are unusually clear, full, intense. Spirits rise. Laughter increases. A sense of well-being and cheer descends. The pumpkin flan is unmolded: a wobbly, deep-orange mountain in a lake of golden caramel.

After dinner comes a fireworks extravaganza, which demonstrates the proper use of teenagers: Give them a box of explosives, some adult supervision, and they're delirious with joy.

Later, when the smoke has cleared, Anna Thomas opens presents. One is a small titanium saucepan with collapsible handle and lid - it's from a woman who scaled Mount Whitney with Thomas a year ago. Thomas marvels at the pan's near weightlessness and clever design. You can almost hear her cook's mind at work. Is it possible that the woman who put the pleasure into vegetarian cuisine might do the same from backpacking grub?

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